Numb3rs: Harvest

This was by far one of the better episodes this season. Very solid story that felt real (and I say that
because I know I've seen stuff like this on shows like Primetime and 20/20), and it finally gave Navi
Rawat (she plays Amita) a reason to be in the credited cast. That's right, we finally got to see her for a large
portion of the episode as opposed to one line in the opening thirty seconds.

If you walked into a room and saw a
pile of ice, a car battery, and a ton of plastic sheeting covered in blood, what would you think? Actually, scratch
that... let's not go there. Don and David stumbled on to this scene in the basement of an LA hotel. As if it weren't
gruesome enough, a young Indian girl was found in the back of the room. Good thing someone tipped off the FBI.

At the FBI headquarters, Amita is the only person that the victim will speak to. Turns out the language the girl was
speaking in was a dialect common to the area where Amita's parents were from. She said that her sister was still
missing along with two other girls. Meghan finds the sister at the hospital morgue. She died from complications that
arose from kidney removal. Apparently that hotel likes to rent out its basement to black market organ harvesters. The
girls had been promised money and the prospect of US citizenship if they came to America and gave up their
kidneys.

Charlie ran all sorts of algorithms to analyze how fast the ice had melted in the room as well as
determining all the unrecorded stops of an ambulance driver who became implicated after a bakery delivery guy ratted
him out. The one stop that kept standing out for the driver was a hospital, which isn't a surprise, unless you consider
that this hospital was completely out of his way. Don and Colby find out that the night manager at the hotel also worked
in the morgue at that hospital. Bingo. He harvested the organs and the ambulance guy dropped the bodies off at the
hospital where the other guy would go in the morning and fudge the paperwork for the person he butchered the night
before.

They end up finding the sister in time and all is well. I really liked how this episode forced Amita to
look at who she was and where she came from. It was interesting and at one point she got so emotional, she even kissed
Charlie. It's about time. If you've been reading any of my other reviews, then you know I'm a big proponent of back
story, so this episode gets a check mark in my book.

When Numb3ers first aired, I thought it was going to be really goodsince Judd Hirsch, Rob Morrow and David Krumholtz were going to bethe main characters. No problem there, but good grief, could theytone down the "startle effect" that David's character shows everytime "Larry" (Peter MacNichol) comes sneaking into the scene?? Andwhy does he (Larry/Peter) do that anyway? Its getting a bit tiresomeand predictable. In fact the entire show is predictable EVERY week.Same scenario... case opens, call in Charlie, Larry sneaks up onCharlie either in the garage or at school, small mention/scene withCharlies dream-girl, Charlie & Robb tie up the case. End of episode.How many shows can drag on and on ?? I used to watch it every week,but its beginning to get really boring.

When Numb3ers first aired, I thought it was going to be really good since Judd Hirsch, Rob Morrow and David Krumholtz were going to be the main characters. No problem there, but good grief, could they tone down the "startle effect" that David's character shows every time "Larry" (Peter MacNichol) comes sneaking into the scene?? And why does he (Larry/Peter) do that anyway? Its getting a bit tiresome and predictable. In fact the entire show is predictable EVERY week. Same scenario... case opens, call in Charlie, Larry sneaks up on Charlie either in the garage or at school, small mention/scene with Charlies dream-girl, Charlie & Robb tie up the case. End of episode. How many shows can drag on and on ?? I used to watch it every week, but its beginning to get really boring.

I have to agree with JeffL. I hope the dumbing down of the math in this episode wasn't a harbinger of thigs to come.

While I can understand the need to get things done in an hour, the morgue-working hotel manager was too convenient, and the ice melting thing was a throwaway. The girl could have told them how long it had been since the organ harvesters left her there without ever needing to measure the rate at which the ice liquified.

For the first time, the math felt like a gimmick instead of part of the story. And the story itself suffered for the sake of the story arc. Character development is necessary, but not at the cost of the meat of the show.

Where was the math? This is Numbers, not Law & Order: University Security. One small throw away with trying to figure out where the ambulance was going. More, please!

Where was the law? Doctor/client priveldge was violated half a dozen times without a second thought. No way the doc gives up the name of the Rich Guy waiting for the kidney. No way the FBI so easily gets the names & medical info for the entire list of people waiting for kidneys.

Worst of all, the whole time-line of the episode was ridiculous. Don & the crew show up at the hotel just as the surgeon is about the cut open the sister? Come on, that's nuts. For that to make any sense, you have to completel ignore that fact that it took days for the FBI-ies to piece everthing together, and the organ harvesters could have done thier business in a day or less. But even as drama it was a lousy attempt to manipulate the audience into feeling suspense over who would get there first. We weren't given enough reasons to care about the sister, and there wasn't enough tension in the FBI "attempts" to find the hotel room.